


sit down by the fire

by spiekiel



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Lethe - Freeform, M/M, Memory Loss, Pack Feels, Scars, The Hale Pack - Freeform, Violence, no worries though happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-06 13:23:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1859595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiekiel/pseuds/spiekiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"A concussion did that," Scott says, his voice hollow.  "Five years, just - gone."</p><p>Deaton looks over at Stiles, back at Scott.  Stiles knows that look - it's the 'we've done everything we can' look.  "My deepest condolences to your pack."</p><p>There are howls in the hallway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sit down by the fire

Stiles has never seen Derek cry before.At least, in the couple of weeks that he's known Derek, he hasn't.

 

He doesn't see it now, either - but he can hear it.Derek in the hallway outside the room with Deaton's operating table, deep wrenching sobs that sound like the final pleas of a dying man, which were no where in Derek's stoic expression when he was in here a minute ago.Some blonde chick who Stiles vaguely recognizes is out there with him, and she'd been crying too, when she was in here, silently like she was bearing someone else's pain.

 

There's a loud, _"Fuck!"_ from the hallway, a slam against the wall that Stiles is pretty sure is a fist.Lydia Martin flinches in the corner, which - when did that happen, anyways? When did Lydia fucking Martin start giving two shits about Stiles enough to care - to even _know_ when he got a concussion?

 

Scott is talking to Deaton, his arms crossed in front of his chest, shoulders hunched inwards."How long, do you think?" he asks.  

 

He looks over his shoulder at Stiles, still sprawled on the operating table but conscious, now, at least; his eyes are watery, red around the edges, and that's probably the first clue Stiles gets that something seriously _bad_ is going on here.

 

He has memories of getting that same look - guarded and not-quite-yet grieving, but most of the way there - outside his mom's hospital room, from the people in white coats who'd never quite learned how to talk to a twelve year old boy.

 

"How long did he lose?" Deaton asks."Or how long is it going to stay lost?"

 

Scott makes a face like coach has given him two options - stay on the bench or run into the game head first just to get body-slammed."Both, I guess.Both."

 

"From what I can see, situationally," Deaton starts, "he doesn't recognize Erica, he seems very shocked by the fact that Lydia is even here, and Derek, well...he has no idea.He seems to still...be distant from him.I'd guess he's lost about five years, just based on that."

 

He looks nervous, before his next words, which from doctors has never been a good sign, in Stiles' experience."As for how long it will be gone - well...I can't see any reason for memories of those five years to ever come back."

 

Lydia turns away from the room, her face in her hands.Stiles wants to go over there, tell her it's okay, but his legs feel like they're probably a little wobbly, and he has no reason to believe, despite questionable circumstances, that she wouldn't just shove him away.

 

"A concussion did that," Scott says, his voice hollow."Five years, just - gone."

 

Deaton looks over at Stiles, back at Scott.Stiles knows that look, too - it's the _we've done everything we can_ look."My deepest condolences to your pack."

 

There are howls in the hallway.

 

*

 

Stiles learns a lot the next few days.

 

Like - Scott and Allison are married, with a kid on the way, and Chris Argent, who is the only Argent left other than Allison, wholeheartedly supports their relationship, which is a little weird to adjust to.Not as weird as the fact that he aparently lives in the old Hale house now, which has in the interim become more than just a burnt-out shell.He has his own room, even - though it looks kind of sparse, just a few of his possessions and a neutral grey bed set, which Stiles knows he would never in a million years go for.

 

He meets Erica and Boyd, the latter of whom manages to put on a brave, smiley face for him, even while his girlfriend cries a little into his shirtsleeve.He is told that he likes Jackson now, which seems far too alien to accept without some investigation into Jackson's character.Isaac seems to be everything Stiles ever wanted in a curly-haired puppy wrapped up in a hunky body.Lydia, bundled up in a Stanford sweatshirt, actually _hugs_ him, what the hell, but he manages to stay standing, and doesn't feel faint at all, which has to be improvement of some sort.  

 

Scott sits him down and spends the next few days after Stiles wakes up making him watch all the movies of the past five years that are of any merit or interest, which is probably what Scott views as the gentlest start to a whole lot of catching up - but, like, "They actually made a live-action _Teen Mutant Ninja Turtles,_ you _have_ to be kidding me."

 

The first time Stiles takes off his shirt, he's assaulted by a myriad timeline of bruises, cuts, and abrasions, and underneath them all, scars.He picks out a couple of bullet wounds, and what he swears to hell and back is a machete-hewn chunk out of the back of one of his shoulders.The newest wound - a split up his forehead into his hair - he think will heal rather terribly, will turn into a mottled mess of scar.

 

He doesn't see Derek for that first week, or so.  

 

Derek's in the house, most of the time - sometimes Stiles will see him out the window of the den, coming back from a run and looking less murderous than he would expect, more bone-tired, eyes downcast, muscles still tense like he's fighting something off, actively every moment of every day.

 

He hears Allison and Derek at the bottom of the stairs, one day, when he's passing through the upstairs hallway."We can take him back to our place," Allison is saying, "if you need."

 

"No," Derek says, quicker than she can finish her offer."He's pack, he's...He stays here."

 

Stiles spends his days trying to figure out why the hell he ever thought it was a good idea to take ten online classes at once, even if none of them meet every day.Lydia shows up on the third day or so and buckles down to help him slog through some of his backlogged work, because she's a mathematics genius.She's comfortable around him, not on-guard, and she knows him pretty well, for never deigning to speak to him, the last he can remember.  

 

"We never," Stiles says, suddenly, in the middle of one of their sessions."Nothing ever happened between us, did it?My ten-year plan never worked out?"

 

Lydia smiles over the cover of an advanced-level particle physics textbook at him."No, Stiles.Your ten-year plan got derailed a while ago."

 

*

 

His dad comes for dinner, bearing heart-healthy lasagna, which feels like a small victory, with Melissa McCall on his arm, which feels like a revelation Stiles should have had a while ago.  

 

The Sheriff tells embarassing stories about Stiles that Stiles doesn't even remember, which is unfair on so many levels.Everybody laughs, but Stiles doesn't feel out of place or uncomfortable at all, because even though he's only known some of these people for what feels like a couple of weeks, there isn't a person at the table who doesn't love him, apparently unconditionally.  

 

Derek almost smiles, a couple of times.His mouth will start to curl up at the corners, he'll look down the table, instinctively seeking out someone's gaze, he'll land on Stiles, and the smile will fade away before it was ever fully there.

 

*

 

He has nightmares, most nights.

 

There are memories, just at the edges of his awareness - he can feel them, feel the fear in them, the ecstacy, all with an overpowering sense of direction that doesn't quite fit right in his head.There are smells, tastes, iron blood in his mouth and salty sweat on his tongue, sounds, like _I love you,_ a murmur in his ear, like his own screams, and for some reason, he's screaming _Derek._

 

Stiles disentangles himself from his sheets and stands, the floorboards creaking loud enough under his feet to be heard throughout the quiet house.His skin cools almost instantly, not quite chilled, not yet at least.There's just enough moonlight to see by, so he heads down stairs, for a midnight snack or a stack of Isaac's pop culture magazines - something to put his mind back to rest.

 

Derek's sitting at the kitchen table, with a paperbook open in front of him.He looks up a few seconds before Stiles pads in, puts the book down in front of him - Stiles would recognize the cover of _Life, the Universe, and Everything_ anywhere, it's one of his favorite books.It even looks like his copy.

 

"Sorry," he says, "I'll just go back to bed, then."He turns to go, but -

 

"You've been having nightmares, right?" Derek says.He looks sleepy, maybe a little less guarded than usual, his hair rumpled up, and this feels familiar, somehow, sitting up with Derek in the middle of the night.

 

Stiles hesitates in the doorway for a second, then carefully takes the chair across from Derek at the table."I've - " he runs a hand through his hair, his weight on his elbows."I've been dreaming, yeah.I think they're memories, I can just - never remember them when I wake up."

 

Derek's looking down at the table.He thumbs the corner of the paperback, and Stiles catches a glimpse of a page blocked out completely in pink highlighter, which makes it _definitely_ his copy."They're there, though," Derek says, after a long moment."Your memories.You think they're there."

 

Stiles waves his hands, palm up."I have no idea," he says."But - it feels like...something.There's something there."

 

Derek's perpetually-pained expression loosens a little around the edges.That, or Stiles is just really tired, and still doesn't understand the nature of their relationship, and is making shit up that might settle him enough to go back to sleep in a couple minutes.

 

He sleeps just as fruitlessly as before, but while he's under there are warm hands, a hearty smile, a laugh laughed against his skin that promises _better things to come_ , always.

 

*

 

When Stiles wakes up, his ears are ringing with this - 

 

 _You will not remember until it is too late_.

 

*

 

 He gets carted off to Allison and Scott's house to wait out the full moon.

 

Lydia is there too, come back up from Stanford for moral support of the Jackson-centric variety and what quickly turns into a chick-flick marathon, complete with ten different flavors of ice cream.Stiles feels slightly emasculated, but with the way Allison's pregnancy hormones have been manifesting, he's not about to risk saying anything that might be construed as out of line.

 

They're fifteen minutes into _Clueless_ when Lydia's phone rings.Allison answers it on speakerphone because Lydia is too caught up in admiring Paul Rudd, nineties version, and Stiles can't really blame her.

 

"Get over here now," Jackson's on the other line."We're going to need that industrial sized first aid kit."

 

Someone says something behind him - it sounds like Isaac, but Stiles doesn't know him well enough yet to be sure.Jackson's back, "And we're going to need Stiles, too. Pronto."He hangs up.

 

Allison curses like a sailor as they pile into her Honda, and Lydia not only grabs that enormous first aid kit from Scott and Allison's master bathroom, but also sticks a handgun into the waistband of her sweatpants.Stiles feels like he's missing something - a shield, maybe, or a bulletproof vest, because it sure as hell feels like they're going into battle, here.

 

"What the hell's going on?" he asks, when he gets his wits about him.  

 

They're on the road, no lights but their headlights, out into the forest of the preserve already.There are no other cars out this late, not that there are usually cars on this road - maybe Beacon Hills has finally learned that they've got a higher concentration than average of things that go bump in the night.

 

Lydia looks back at him from the passenger's seat."Derek," she says.  

 

Allison looks sideways at her, sharply."Lydia, should you - "

 

"We were worried about something like this happening," Lydia continues."That Derek would lose his anchor, or he would go looking for it and it would be..." she swallows "...not quite there anymore."

 

"What does that mean?" Stiles asks.His voice sounds slightly hysterical, and he hasn't had a panic attack since he woke up, but this would be a hell of a time for one, and he's always had fantastic timing.

 

They pull up to the Hale house before Lydia comes up with an answer.All the lights are on, and there's noise coming from inside, banging and yelling, an animalistic growl - 

 

Erica comes rushing down the front steps to meet them as they climb out of the car.She's wide-eyed, and there are cuts on her face, she's holding her right wrist a little funny, hair in complete disarray, tangled with twigs.Her feet are bare, which seems out of character, because she usually has scary boots on.  

 

"Derek started to come back from the wolf form, but - he couldn't get it all the way," she says, breathless."He went crazy - we didn't know what he might do, we had to bring him back here, but he didn't want to come.He wanted to run, I think - maybe not come back, either."

 

Allison has a hand on her belly.She's just started to show."You think having Stiles with him will help him? It won't just make it worse - like you said, having it but not getting it all the way?"

 

Erica shrugs, helplessly."I think it's worth a try."

 

Stiles hasn't been in Derek's room, that he can remember, but that's where Erica leads him now.Down a hallway of tense wolves, all with some sort of wounds, Stiles clutches the first aid kit.He returns Scott's tense smile at the end of the hall, outside Derek's doorway.  

 

"He's already calmed down a little," Scott says."I think he can smell you.Hear your heartbeat, you know."

 

There's a soft keening from the other side of the door.A man lamenting his broken heart, Stiles' brain supplies for some reason.

 

He goes inside.

 

A lot of the questions he still has are answered all at once.  

 

Derek's sitting on the edge of a large bed, bleeding onto a tangle of Bat-signal bedsheets, which a much younger Stiles spent many a week-end morning admiring at the mall in town, plotting for the day when he'd have enough money to his name to buy them for himself.Derek has a red sweatshirt in his hands, has his face buried in it, and he's breathing deeply, shoulders shaking a little with every exhale.

 

There's a collection of paperback books against one wall, half of them lined up in a locker-sized bookshelf, half of them piled in a cardboard box.On top of the pile is _Life, the Universe, and Everything_ , only the cover is torn, the binding bent.  

 

Drawers on every dresser are pulled open, like Derek went on a wild rampage looking for Stiles' sweatshirt.Clothes are strewn everywhere - Derek's henleys and dark jeans and Stiles' graphic tees and kuordoroys - but Stiles can see that this was organized once, that the top drawer on one side of the room survived, to bear evidence of his very own sock organization system, designed at age eight.

 

Derek is bleeding out of gashes in his sides - the aftermath of some friendly corraling - but Stiles sets the first aid kit down by the door, then closes it off to the hallway.He walks carefully across the room, and Derek freezes visibly as he sits down on the edge of the bed next to him.

 

Stiles clears his throat."I - uh.I'm still here, Derek."

 

Crazed eyes appear as Derek raises his head - they still glint red, are still more wolf than man, even if Derek's bipedal and human-faced, normal fingernails.  

 

Stiles leans his shoulder against Derek's, which should feel daring, but feels like not enough at all, even though Stiles' rational brain is screaming that he's a fucking idiot."I'm still here," Stiles repeats."And as long as my heart is still beating, we still have a chance.You just have to keep trying.We both have to keep trying."

 

Derek breathes hard, once.He squeezes his eyes shut, grinds his jaw so hard Stiles can see the muscles clenching, but when his eyes blink back open, they're hazel again - they meet Stiles', and his heart clenches because -

 

All the ways he doesn't know this man, all the ways he should, the ways he wants to.He doesn't know what he lost at all, and he thinks it's worse than if he did know - worse to sit here in a home that he built with Derek and feel lost with every grieving glance, every stilted conversation at midnight over leftover lasagna.

 

"I'm not giving up," Derek says.He still sounds raw, but, it's speech, it's a sentence, so it's better.

 

Stiles stands up.Derek sways a little into the spot where he was, like Stiles was the only thing supporting him.Stiles puts his hands on either side of Derek's face and presses his lips to his forehead, oh-so gently."We're gonna figure this out, sourwolf," he whispers.

 

*

 

Stiles gets in the Jeep and drives a few miles from the house before he's certain he's out of wolf-hearing range.He doesn't want to get anyone's hopes up with a wild theory before it's been validated.

 

"I think it was a curse," he says into his cell phone."Some sort of spell, or some other witchcraft."

 

Deaton's on the other end, and he's made it very clear that Stiles is his number one priority patient, but definitely not his highest-paying client, so the conversation has to be quick."If you're just looking for wild solutions to chase, Stiles, I'm not sure I can offer any expertise - "

 

"I remembered something," Stiles interrupts."A few weeks ago.Someone saying something - _You will not remember until it is too late."_  

 

"I suppose that's something."

 

"Plus," Stiles continues, quieter."You don't just - forget _pack_.You don't forget your _mate_."  

 

Deaton's quiet for a minute.Stiles hopes to hell he's thinking over solutions in his head."Alright," he says, after a while."The night they brought you in with the concussion, the pack was out, trying to stop some wannabe practitioners from _summoning_ something.I have no idea what it was, though - "

 

"You think that could be it? The thing they were trying to summon?"

 

"I have to do some more research, Stiles, before I can be sure.Give me two days, then drop by the clinic."

 

*

 

The house that his dad now shares with Melissa isn't Stiles' home anymore.He isn't sure where his home is yet, but it's not there, and it wasn't Scott's place, either.  

 

The couch is still the same, though.Plush leather and the spot at the end that sinks a little lower from all those hours of video games through the summers of middle school.Stiles curls up with a whole box of Chips Ahoy, which Melissa feels absolutely no remorse in stealing from him after he's eaten ten or twenty.

 

"I was really happy, wasn't I?"He waits to ask the Sheriff until after Melissa has gone up to bed, until a few more beers have warmed in his father's stomach, made him more receptive.

 

His dad fixes him with one of those piercing looks that usually mean he's about to get a lecture."Yeah, Stiles," he says."You were almost always bruised, you started carrying knives on your person, you gave up Stanford to stay with the pack, and you flinched towards cover at loud noises, but....you were happy.You had Derek, and you were fighting _for_ something.For the pack, I think.Or for the greater good.You had everything you wanted.You were - really, really happy."

 

"I wish I could go back," Stiles whispers.He's not sure if his dad hears him.

 

*

 

It's been a little over a month, and the heat of summer is starting to set in, permeating through the house where the repair boards haven't quite been hammered in straight.All the werewolves run hot-blooded anyways, but Stiles isn't used to this, to the humidity, to the fact that a bunch of über-hot people annualy take to walking around the house half-naked.

 

He won't ditch his shirt during the day, but he does it for sleeping, because there's no sense in being that stubborn, really.It's not like he's helping anyone by sweating to death.  

 

Through the door to the kitchen, he can see Derek, in just a pair of boxers, working his way through what must be the tail end of Stiles' paperback collection, given the dime-store sci-fi novel cover.Stiles walks in quietly, but the werewolf hearing kicks in and Derek looks up as he enters, setting the book down.

 

His eyes flitter down Stiles' bare chest, probably mostly of their own accord.They linger on one scar - a bullet wound by his heart, that must have been a pretty goddamn close call if Stiles learned anything in his high school anatomy class.

 

Stiles licks his lips briefly."You must know what every one of these is from," he ventures.Derek's eyes flick up to his, his expression earnest, forehead creased between his eyebrows.  

 

"I only recognize a couple," Stiles continues.He points to one on his collarbone."On the playground, in third grade, I collided with Scott on the swings broke my clavicle in two places."Points to a second one, on his knee."Ice skating, sixth grade, trying to impress Lydia with my smooth moves, but ended up slicing myself instead."

 

Derek rises from the table.He comes over, not stopping until he's right in Stiles' personal space, Stiles' back almost pressed against the refrigerator.It's like two extremes - cool air from the fridge wafting against his back, Derek's body heat looming almost comfortingly in front of him, maybe hotter than the summer.

 

Derek's thumb brushes over a scar at Stiles' hip, and an involuntary shiver runs up from his touch."This one was - an Alpha pack tried to take over our territory.Just a scratch, nothing serious."

 

His hand drifts upward, trailing across Stiles' abdomen to what looks like a burn, just above his belly button.His lips twitch, and he says, "Attempted virgin sacrifice."

 

Stiles laughs before he can help himself."Seriously?"

 

Derek's smile actually goes so far as to reach his eyes."You decided the best way out of that one was to make you... _not_ a virgin."His eyelashes are very dark, very long, but he still manages to gaze up at Stiles from under them.Stiles' heart beats a little faster, and if he sways forward, well - 

 

Derek catches him by the back of the neck and kisses him, more gentle than Stiles would ever think Derek Hale had any right to be.It's just a quick touch of lips, lingering for a moment that lasts something like a million years, feels like coming home after a long stay away, but - 

 

It's over, and the feeling is gone.Derek brushes the back of his hand over the gunshot wound next to Stiles' heart, and says, "I almost lost you, here.Thank god Lydia's first aid kit has a defibrillator in it."

 

*

 

Lydia's running ahead of him, her backpack swinging from her shoulders, handgun in one hand, finger on the trigger.Stiles' breaths are coming heavy, but he keeps pushing, bounding over roots and around trees, sneakers _this close_ to slipping over leaves and shit on the forest floor.

 

He can hear them coming behind them - fucking wannabe practitioners, hot on their heels, with flimsy spells, especially in a gunfight.But they've got something else - numbers, lots of them, almost twelve, and twelve different spells, however flimsy, all flying at you from different directions are a lot more difficult to deal with.

 

The Hale house is starting to show in the distance, through the moonlit fog.It was never a good idea to try this while the pack was out, but here Stiles is, alone in the forest, only with Lydia because she figured out he was planning something and demanded to be let in on it.

 

They skid to a stop in the clearing in front of the house.The witches are cackling off in the woods, as they close on their positions, but Lydia fumbles her bag off her shoulders and pulls out a bottle of - 

 

"Salt?" Stiles asks incredulously.

 

"Shut up, it works," Lydia snaps.She bends down and starts pouring a circle around them, manoevering herself between Stiles' legs to complete it.

 

"I thought that stuff was only good on demons," Stiles huffs.

 

"Where do you think these bitches get their power?" Lydia says."From things they summon.They weren't just trying to summon Lethe a month ago for no reason, Stiles.They wanted the powers to get rid of people's memories.So, summon the goddess of forgetfulness, bind her to your will, and voila."

 

They're standing back-to-back, eyes searching the woods constantly.There's no one in the house behind them - if there were, the pack would be out by now, defending their humans against whatever the hell mess they'd gone and gotten themselves into this time, but there's nothing, just Stiles' Jeep and the Camaro, silent masses of metal in the darkness.

 

"So, how do we undo it?" Stiles' voice is overly loud between them.The cackling is getting closer, dancing up above the branches and on the leaves of the trees to reach them.

 

Lydia opens her mouth to answer, but before she can - 

 

Howling joins the malevolent approach of the witches.Stiles recognizes them all by now - Scott and Isaac and Jackson, Boyd and Erica, and louder than all of them, their Alpha.  

 

Lydia relaxes against his back, but there's another kind of urgency in the air, now - not a _dear god we're going to die_ urgency, but a _protect the pack, defend the pack_ urgency.She bends down to pick up the backpack, slings it over her shoulders, cocks the gun so there's something in the chamber to work with.

 

Stiles swallows, but when she nods at him, he nods back.He doesn't think he'll ever get used to running back _towards_ danger, though, especially when he's just shaken it off.It must be muscle memory, though - the adrenalin pumps and Stiles runs on autopilot, the sound of the pack howling and fighting like a tractor beam in the darkness.  

 

Lydia stops so abruptly Stiles almost runs into her.  

 

They're looking down at a clearing in a sort of valley, around a small stream, both standing at the edge of a precipice that's almost a sheer drop down.There's not much light to see by, just the moon overhead and the quick flashes of spells flung by the witches, illuminating bared teeth and inhuman irises.Stiles picks out Derek in the fray, slightly larger than all the others, taking on three bitches at once, holding them expertly at bay with his claws and brute force.

 

As he watches, one of the witches steps away from the fray, reaching into her jacket with one hand.Stiles is barely able to choke out a warning before the witch has a gun out, a machine gun - she sprays the fight in front of her with bullets, and her two comrades are untouched, but Derek lets out guttural whine and goes down, hard.

 

Stiles is stumbling down the cliff face before he makes the decision to move.He vaguely registers Lydia, above him, dispatching the witch with two short shots from her own gun, both to the head.  

 

The fighting is still going on around him, Scott taking a slice out of witch not two feet from him, but all he can see is Derek's slumped form on the ground.His heart is going to explode out of his chest, any second now, the blood rushing through his head faster than his brain can use it, and he has a weird feeling, but there's not time now - 

 

He drops down to his knees at Derek's side.There's a lot of blood.

 

"Oh, god," Stiles says."God, you could not have picked a worse time to do this, really, we were so _close_ \- "

 

Derek makes a gurgling sound, that sounds vaguely annoyed, and might be the word, " _Stiles_."

 

Stiles presses his hands hard against the wounds on Derek's torso, but there are a lot of them, and he doesn't really know where to focus his efforts."Christ, Derek, really, this is bad," he babbles."Why aren't you healing, really you should be - wolfsbane bullets, okay."

 

Derek's eyes roll back in his head, and he's unconscious, which is probably better for this portion of the day anyways, except - shock? Do werewolves even go into shock? This feels like something he should know - 

 

"Bloodloss is going to be our biggest problem," Lydia says, because apparently Stiles just talks out loud when he's panicking, fantastic - "Don't panic," Lydia snaps.She goes digging in her bag, extracts the first aid kid, goes digging again, and produces a pair of tweezers and a flashlight.

 

She clicks on the flashlight, and passes the tweezers to Stiles."We have to get the bullets up before he can start healing," she instructs."You're usually better at Operation, and you're taking a premed class for some reason, so go."

 

Stiles pulls open Derek's shirt, ripping it down the middle.A couple of buttons go flying off into the darkness.The flashlight reveals four bullet wounds - not too many, at least - all oozing a steady stream of blood.Stiles shoves his panic down and sets to work - one has an exit wound on Derek's back, but he gets the two bullets near his waist out, chucking them as far into the woods as he can like he can distance them all from the damage the wolfsbane has no doubt done.

 

The last bullet is very close to Derek's heart, and Stiles - Stiles' own heard pounds against the inside of his chest, and he thinks he can feel the residual pain from his own bullet wound, almost in the same spot, like they've both been shot through by one bullet all over again - 

 

He goes in with the tweezers, hunched over Derek's body in the middle of a hurricane of confusion and flashing light and screams, growls, yowls.He feels the bullet, grabs it with the tweezers, and - 

 

Derek breathes out a last time, against Stiles' face, his eyes barely-open but human, hazel.

 

*

 

_You will not remember until it is too late._

 

And he does, then.Remember, that is.All of it.

 

He remembers Derek's heartbeat strong under his hands, under his ear while he sleeps,He remembers the first time Derek kissed him, ever, after Stiles nearly lost his foot to a bear trap meant for the pack, more anger and relief than anything else, but still so much better than anything before it.He remembers waking up with Derek, sunlight through the dust in their old house, rolling over and kissing Derek's shoulder, then lower, lower, Derek's hands on him and Derek's bedhead and Derek's legs tangled with his.

 

He remembers _mate_ , the promise of forever, always, until the end of time.

 

*

 

" _Clear!"_

 

A shock.Derek's body lurches up underneath Stiles, his spine arching.A moment of silence, just the sound of Stiles' own breath in his ears, then - 

 

_"Clear!"_

 

Lydia puts the paddles on, triggers the charge.Derek arches again, then slumps back against the ground, his head rolling over to the side, against Stiles' thigh.Stiles wants to cry, he wants to scream - he finally can have Derek back and _he's gone,_ it's too late already, what the hell did they ever do to deserve this - but if he does, he's afraid they'll lose this moment forever - this one moment when things could go either way.

 

_"Clear."_

 

Another shock, and Lydia fumbles for Derek's pulse at his neck.The paddles in her hand are stained with blood, way too much of it, and Derek is pale, pale as he was the last time he had wolfsbane poisoning.  

 

Lydia's shoulders slump, and she pulls her hand away, but when she looks up at him, she's - she's smiling, just slightly."He's got a pulse," she says."We need to cauterize these wounds _now_ , though, or he's going to bleed out anyways."  

 

*

 

Stiles wakes slowly.It's cozy in bed, burrowed down under too many blankets, someone else's limbs wrapped around him, the sunlight and a gentle breeze streaming in through the open window.His eyelids feel weighted down, but he coaxes them open, squinting a little in the yellow light.

 

Derek's kissing the junction of Stiles' neck and shoulder, his stubble scratching at Stiles' skin.Stiles' hand runs up his back to twist into his hair, and Derek hums against him, the sound sending gentle vibrations down Stiles' spine.He moves upwards, to Stiles' neck, to his jaw, his cheek, and then - the new scar on Stiles' forehead, still a jagged pink line in his skin.

 

Stiles' hands skate over Derek's chest, and down his abdomen.He has scars now, too - scars that will never heal, thanks the the wolfsbane weapons that carved them - and they catch on the pads of Stiles' fingers, but they're comforting, in a way - four bullet wounds, burned closed, that Derek walked away from, that gave Stiles back his five years, that almost stopped both their hearts but failed.

 

"Thank god," Stiles murmurs, "Lydia's first aid kit has a defibrillator in it."

 

Derek kisses him, slow, his warm hands on Stiles' sides, sliding around to his back.Stiles kisses back, and he feels Derek smile against his mouth, his hold tightening.

 

**Author's Note:**

> title is from the song "sit down by the fire" by the veils. check it out yo


End file.
